Growth Sector was asked to contribute a blog post to the Silicon Valley Competitiveness and Innovation Project’s Blog. The Silicon Valley Competitiveness and Innovation Project’s Blog is a collaborative effort of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Collaborative Economics, and the Morgan Family Foundation. The blog post can be viewed here.

Growth Sector, in collaboration with 15 community colleges in California and Maryland and partner employers NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Lab, developed a winning proposal for National Science Foundation’s INCLUDES initiative. Over the next 18 months, Growth Sector, in collaboration with lead applicant Saddleback College, will work to create a nationwide alliance of community colleges and major, regional employers implementing the STEM Core Model to prepare the next generation of computer science and engineering professionals. NSF awarded 37 INCLUDES proposals who will be eligible to apply for one of five $12.5 million INCLUDES Alliance grants in 2017/2018. Official announcement from NSF can be found here- http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=189706&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click.

Career Pathways Trust allowing students to explore the universe

Eight high school students are spending the summer helping scientists at NASA’sJet Propulsion Laboratory study dwarf planets, design future Mars missions, observe Earth’s climate change and even look for extraterrestrial life.

The students from Santa Ana Unified School District belong to a prestigious eight-week internship at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, allowing them to work alongside some of the nation’s top engineers, analysts and scientists.

The internship was created this summer as part of California’s Career Pathways Trust, the nearly $500 million effort aimed at promoting partnerships between schools, community colleges, business and institutes to prepare students for real-world jobs.

Through the Trust, scores of students across the state have also landed paid summer internships at medical centers, tech companies and entertainment firms, learning skills alongside professionals that educators say will help them in college and eventually guide them as they choose careers.

“This is not a job shadow,” said David Seidel, manager of the lab’s education program. “We expect these students to help our team perform high-level work.”

‘Out-of-this-world’ training

Minhanh Chau, from Santa Ana’s Segerstrom High School, is interning in the lab’s Exoplanet Exploration Program, the department responsible for discovery of planetary systems around nearby stars.

Chau works with a team that manages the department’s website. She builds infographics and works on other web design duties.

“This is not a job shadow,” said David Seidel, manager of the education program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We expect these students to help our team perform high-level work.”

“This is so thrilling. I get to come to this place every day and work at a place that searches for alien life forms,” she said.

Paula Casian, from Godinez Fundamental High, is helping write instructions for the handling of diodes and soldering for the hardware being built for a rover set to launch in 2020 as part of a mission to further explore Mars.

“The most important thing I hope to learn this summer is the level of education and skills required to become a successful manufacturing engineer in the scientific world,” she said.

The lab has 600 interns at its campus this summer. But the Santa Ana teens, all incoming seniors, are the only high school students.

Each student will receive a $4,000 stipend at the end of the internship in August. The funding comes from the propulsion lab’s partnership with OpTerra Energy Services, which is working with the Orange County Department of Education’s OC Pathways Project.

“This is such an extraordinary opportunity. To be interns at JPL and get the NASA experience as high school students, I can’t imagine a better entry into the field,” said Jeff Hittenberger, the county department of education’s chief academic officer.

The students were chosen for the internship based on academic achievement in science or math Advanced Placement courses, and because they expressed an interest in pursuing careers in science, technology, education and math, or STEM, fields.

The students each work nearly 40 hours a week. They carpool daily in two SUVs the 50 miles to Pasadena from Santa Ana, leaving at 6 a.m. to avoid traffic. They regularly sit in on staff meetings and are required to provide reports to supervisors on their team’s work.

“This experience will be very valuable no matter what job I choose,” said Saddleback High student Luis Terrones, who is considering a career in software development.

The student works with web developers and editors to maintain, update and provide quality assurance for the website chronicling the Dawn Mission, a satellite currently orbiting and mapping Ceres, a dwarf planet 260 million miles away.

“I’m learning how to work in a professional environment, and how to work with others to get the job done,” he said.

Busy summer for other students

The Career Pathways Trust is a two-year effort created to blend academics with hands-on work experience in high-demand industries including health care, accounting, technology and engineering.

The program, believed to be the largest single investment in career technical education in the nation, last year awarded $250 million in competitive grants to 39 school districts, county offices of education, community colleges and charter schools. The grants ranged from $583,000 to $15 million.

This summer, more than 1,500 high school students statewide are expected to participate in internships funded through the Trust.

At Los Angeles Unified, which received a $15 million grant last year, more than 300 students are spending their summer in paid internships at UCLA Medical Center, the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, Kaiser Permanente hospitals, the Discovery Cube Los Angeles children’s science museum, and at other business or sites across the region. The students earn $9 hourly through the internships.

“Industries really want to work with our students. They see this as an opportunity to train future employees,” said Esther Soliman, the administrator for LAUSD’s Linked Learning Program. “It’s also much easier for many students to do the work in the summer because their schedules are more flexible.”

“This summer, I’m really hoping to figure out what I want to do with my future,” said Fuentes, who’s considering a career in electrical engineering because of the summer program. “I really think this internship is going a long way to help me figure that out.”

This article originally appeared in edsource.org. Fermin Leal is the college and career reporter for Edsource.. Email him or Follow him on Twitter. Sign up here for a no-cost online subscription to EdSource Today for reports from the largest education reporting team in California.

Sign up here for a no-cost online subscription to EdSource Today for reports from the largest education reporting team in California.

They also didn’t know that in only two years’ time, they would stand out as women in the field of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). Why do they stand out? It’s simple math: Currently, women make up only 25 percent of the STEM workforce, while 57 percent of the entire workforce is female.

For these young women, there’s a benefit to entering a male-dominated field: According to a report from the United States Department of Commerce, women with STEM jobs earn 33 percent more than women in non-STEM occupations and are engaged in some of the most exciting realms of discovery and technological innovations.

Supporting women to pursue STEM careers has become an issue of national significance. According to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, supporting women in STEM is an essential part of America’s strategy to out-innovate the rest of the world.

Despite the statistics, Leah, Mallory, and Tara remain unfazed. “I’m in the minority as a woman in the computer science program,” says Leah, “I’m only one of two women in my class, but I have no problem competing with my male classmates and showing them that I get A’s, too.”

These young women are not only bound together by their ties to STEM fields – they share the common thread of the Department of Labor-sponsored Saddleback College Bridge to Engineering (B2E) program, a small learning community for students interested in the field of engineering. Program participants take classes together, receive academic counseling, tutoring, extensive math prep, and in some cases, paid engineering internships. Each came into contact with the program in different ways, but they all agree that its driving force is Katlin Choi, who serves as the student support and project specialist for the B2E program. “She’s like our school mom,” says Tara. “I’ve found myself in her office stressing out about classes or projects plenty of times, and she just listens and gets us calm and focused again,” adds Mallory.

While the women met at Saddleback College, they arrived on different paths. Leah didn’t go straight to college after high school. Like many students, she found a job that could support her lifestyle, and for a while it was enough. However, once she entered her 20’s, she realized that the job wasn’t what she wanted for the rest of her life. So she turned her attention to Saddleback College, where she currently has her eyes set on a career in civil engineering. In a field full of men, she says, “I feel like there are a lot of opportunities as a woman in the engineering field.” Leah is currently considering transferring to either California State Polytechnic University at Pomona or the University of California, Irvine to earn her four-year degree.

Tara made her way to Saddleback College right after high school. Originally, her plan was to go straight to a four-year university, but she realized going to Saddleback first to decide on her major was a better decision. “I had always loved math and science so I figured I’d give it a shot.” First she considered civil engineering, which led to a mathabotics internship. “It was a really good experience,” she says, “but I realized it wasn’t something I wanted to pursue as a career.” A personal experience with a surgeon years earlier drove her next pursuit: to study biomedical engineering. “I would really love to do surgery, but I would also want to be a biomedical engineer. It’s nice to have both options open to me. If one doesn’t work out I can fall back on the other.” She is currently in the clinical care extender program at Hoag Hospital and is interested in transferring to the University of California, Irvine for the university’s pre-med bioengineering major.

Mallory found her way to Saddleback College after relocating to south Orange County. Last summer, with the help of the college, she landed a paid internship at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, where she worked on a test run for a space exploration rover. Had you asked her a few years ago if she imagined herself at JPL, she may have scoffed at the idea. However, when one of her math courses had her grouped with a cohort of B2E students, she began to see herself in that arena, joined B2E and changed her major to math. It was in the B2E program where she learned of the JPL internship, which allowed her to work with computer vision software that utilizes the principles of math and physics. “I wouldn’t be in this position if it wasn’t for B2E.” Mallory is currently considering her transfer options and is interested in attending the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA, or one of the Cal Poly campuses.

Leah, Tara, and Mallory have done exemplary work and it is women like them that will lead to the diversification of the STEM field. The American Association of University Women stresses, “The representation of women in engineering and computing matters. Diversity in the workforce contributes to creativity, productivity, and innovation. Everyone’s experiences should inform and guide the direction of engineering and technical innovation.”

While they still have some time to go before entering the workforce, Katlin Choi is confident in their skills and abilities, stating, “I’ve known these young women for two and a half years now and I’ve watched them start the program as individuals and evolve into leaders of groups and confident speakers. Each is now able to forge her own path and find solutions. I’m so proud of each of them.”

Free Community College Isn’t the Answer

Today in California, the majority of community college students, and nearly all low-income students, pay few, if any fees. As business columnist Kathleen Pender has detailed, almost half of the state’s community college students receive a waiver on all fees. Federal Pell grants and the American Opportunity Tax Credit, for which low- and even middle-income students are eligible, are additional financial supports. Tuition is not a significant obstacle to enrollment for Californians at all incomes, and hasn’t been for some years.

Instead, at the top of concerns for community college administrators is the low student completion level. The majority of community college students leave without a degree or certificate. A 2010 study by the Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy at California State University Sacramento concluded that within six years of enrollment,only 30 percent of California community students earn an associate or bachelor’s degree. This study finding is consistent with national completion rates, which several estimates have put in the range of 30 to 40 percent.

That low completion rate is rooted in the high number of students who enter community colleges with low math and reading levels. A series of reports over the past decade have found that roughly two-thirds of students enter California community colleges with math and reading levels below those needed to complete college level classes. This gap in basic skills is the main reason students leave without a degree or certificate.

Growth Sector, a Bay Area-based education and job training partnership, has been quietly working since 2008 to address the remediation needs of community college students. At the same time, Growth Sector is addressing the needs of employers by preparing students for jobs in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, especially for engineering technician and related jobs.

Engineering technician jobs, along with jobs such as medical technician, information technology technician, and automotive technician, are distinguished by decent wages (above $15 an hour) and problem solving tasks that cannot be easily automated or off-shored. These “new technician” jobs are part of an emerging middle-class segment of American occupations.

Growth Sector’s main training today is its “Engineering Pathway” through which participants—a mix of veterans, low-income adults, and first-generation college students—earn an associate degree in engineering, and proceed in some cases to a Bachelor of Science in engineering.

The majority of participants start with math and reading levels in the range of seventh to eighth grade, well below college level. They enroll in a yearlong intensive math curriculum, starting at intermediate algebra, and proceeding through geometry, trigonometry, and pre-calculus. “Math is the major barrier to STEM careers, and increasingly to careers in other fields,” Growth Sector’s co-founder and director David Gruber told me.

The Engineering Pathway curriculum is developed and refined by the participating community colleges—four across Northern and Southern California—in close contact with local employers, and Growth Sector. “Early on I learned to start with what the employers needed and work back,” explained Growth Sector’s other co-founder and director, Caz Pereira.

Gruber and Pereira already had decades of education and employment project experience when they founded the organization. By the early 2000s, they had decided that job training needed to shift from training in separate settings, such as community agencies and nonprofits, to mainstream educational institutions, primarily community colleges. “Mainstream institutions have the resources, expertise, and a credential recognized by employers that smaller nonprofits often lack,” Gruber said.

Growth Sector has experimented with different strategies in its remedial math training and has landed on four main approaches:

Learning communities: The 25 participants in each Engineering Pathway cohort take all of their classes together, which Gruber says has surprised him with the value of peer tutoring and support.

Concentrated learning: The math training is accelerated so that students “eat, sleep, and breathe” math, 24 hours a day.

Internships: Students are placed in paid internships with engineering, computer science, and research institutions.

None of these approaches is particularly new or dramatic. Most are being tried today at community colleges around the country. But of the students enrolled over the past two years of the Engineering Pathway, over 65 percent have advanced from intermediate algebra to pre-calculus in one year, and moved on to continuing STEM education. The number of affiliated employers is steadily growing Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley labs, NASA, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are among the organizations now providing work experience for program participants. Gruber maintains that Engineering Pathway’s success demonstrates that “the number of community college students who can master advanced mathematics is considerably more than usual expectations.”

Though Growth Sector is one of California’s best training efforts, it is not alone. Twenty to 30 community college campuses in California are experimenting with innovative remediation efforts and employer partnerships. Going forward, a challenge is how to identify and expand effective work-based remediation efforts in a cost-effective manner.

Any initiative to grow the middle class will consist of numerous elements that go well beyond education and training. Currently, around half of recent college graduates in California and the United States are working in jobs that do not require a college degree; increasing degrees by itself will have a limited impact on income distribution. Further, the jobs projected to have the greatest number of openings in the next decade are ones that require no postsecondary education.

But education and training are one element in any middle-class initiative, and the community colleges are central because of the number of students they educate, their mission of upward mobility, and their universal access. Free community college tuition is not an answer. Instead, the way forward lies in the efforts of local college administrators and individual practitioners, like Gruber and Pereira, experimenting with remediation and job placement projects, building from the ground up.

Michael Bernick, a Zocalo contributing editor, is the former director of the California labor department, and Milken Institute Fellow. His newest book, with Richard Holden, is The Autism Job Club, based on an essay that first appeared at Zocalo. He wrote this for Thinking L.A., a partnership of UCLA and Zocalo Public Square.

On my second “first day” as an intern at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, I felt a very different kind of nervousness from my first internship, last summer.

I still had butterflies, and I didn’t know what my team would be like, but I also felt very comfortable with what I was about to encounter — even the long daily commute from Orange County. As I sat through student orientation, I once again found myself thinking about how I got here, and I’m still in disbelief! Two years ago, I was sitting in my algebra class at Santa Ana College, a digital arts major, when I learned about my school’s Bridge to Engineering Program (B2E). The rapid evolution of computers and the amazing things that technology makes possible have always astounded me. I love art, but I decided I wanted to use my artistic abilities to create something that was useful and innovative, as well as attractive. Through the B2E program, I saw the opportunity to choose a major that I originally thought would be too difficult to take on as a returning student (who had been away from school for over 10 years) a wife, and mother of two. So I changed my major to software engineering.

B2E provides a lot of support that will allow me to fulfill the math courses I require to transfer to a four-year-university as a software engineering major. And it was through B2E that I learned about the opportunity to apply for a robotics internship with JPL’s Minority Student Programs in 2013 — even though I was only starting my freshman year as a software engineering major. Last summer, my assignment was to help test an extreme-terrain rover prototype called Axel. With my team and my mentor, Issa Nesnas, I developed test plans for the rover; I designed and constructed dust barriers for its three on-board cameras (the cone-shaped barrier alleviated potential glitches with video transmissions); and, I helped conduct remote tests of the rover, driving it “blindly” (using only the rover’s images and telemetry to direct it) down the hills above JPL.

Driving the Axel rover was one of the most exciting and at the same time nerve-wracking things I have ever done. Just imagine: You’re only a freshman, this is your first internship, and your mentor says to you, “Here, drive this rover, worth thousands of dollars, blindly down the slopes and through the trees. Just make sure you don’t break it.” Pretty awesome, right? I must have done OK, because my internship was extended. It was one of the most rewarding, exciting and exhausting things I have ever done.Lorenia Jimenez Miramontes poses with Axel, an extreme-terrain prototype rover, during her first internship at JPL in 2013. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Lorenia Jimenez Miramontes

After I finished my internship, I confirmed that software was what I wanted to do. I also wanted to learn more about everything I did over the summer, so I took my first robotics class when I returned to school. My experience at JPL was so incredible that without thinking about the long commute, I decided to apply again. And I feel very fortunate to be here two years in a row, just as excited as the first time, absorbing everything I possibly can from everyone I meet and everything I see. I’m in the robotics section again, this time working with quadrotors alongside my mentor, Roland Brockers. My teammates and I are producing materials for a research video and designing a graphical user interface (i.e., a way for humans to interact with a computer system) for micro air vehicle (MAV) control. My team’s dynamic this year is very different than the last. It’s a bigger group. All the guys are great. They are all very smart, and I’m learning a lot from them.

What I’ve learned during both of my internships is that there is nothing like hands-on experience. Practice is crucial to learning programming; and, team work and a good group dynamic are vital to a project’s success.

I still walk around JPL in awe, but it feels more and more familiar every day. I am still in junior college and most of the interns I’ve met are either seniors or recent graduates from prestigious four-year universities. Some might think it would be intimidating, but I feel lucky to be surrounded by such intelligent people — people who I can learn from. My experience as a summer intern here has only reinforced my desire to continue with my education and tackle any obstacles that the journey brings to one day have a job that I love — one that challenges me and teaches me something new every day. I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this unforgettable experience and for the support I receive from my family to fulfill this incredible dream. It is amazing knowing that my sons associate everything space related to their mommy. I love that.

Engineering program established for veterans

Steven Leahy, a Marine Corps corporal who served in Iraq, is doing computer modeling at the National Security Engineering Division’s Pulsed Power Lab. As part of the Phoenix Project, Leahy reinstalls a relay after creating a computer model of it on the capacitor bank that supplies the initial ‘seed current’ for magnetic flux compression generator experiments. Photo by Julie Russell/LLNL.

The new Engineering Technology Program at Las Positas is designed to help veterans develop the skills and training needed for engineering technician careers, and establishes a pipeline of qualified candidates for LLNL and other Bay Area employers such as NASA and Sandia and Lawrence Berkeley national laboratories.

Up to 30 veterans are expected to enroll in the program when coursework begins at LPC in the fall. Some of them have started the summer internship portion of the program at Lawrence Livermore.

“This program is a win-win situation for both the veterans who have passionately served our nation and employers such as Lawrence Livermore who want to hire vets and need a pipeline of qualified technicians,” said Beth McCormick, an LLNL Strategic Human Resources Management manager, who helped create the program.

“The ability for vets to participate in this type of industry cluster-specific training program will provide a meaningful role in the development of their academic skills and competencies as well as long-term partnerships with employers,” said Pico, who also helped create the program.

The need for technicians has become critical for LLNL as well as other Bay Area employers, especially since many local community colleges had to reduce their two-year technical-degree programs because of state budget cuts. LLNL needs a significant number of technicians to support the replacement of an estimated 200 vacancies over the next five years from retirements.

In response, LLNL, LPC, WIB and the nonprofit Growth Sector developed the curriculum needed for the Engineering Technology Program. Funding from WIB and Growth Sector’s science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) development program, combined with a hands-on technical training at the Lab and LPC’s large veteran population, made launching the Engineering Technology Program possible.

WIB plans and oversees local workforce investment programs, which include one-stop career centers, youth and adult programs, as well as other federal programs that specifically address high-growth industry workforce gaps.Growth Sector develops strategic approaches to bring together employers, community colleges, government and foundations to develop pathways to high-wage, high-growth jobs.

“The collaboration between industry experts and educators has created a program that meets the requirements of local industry’s need,” said Todd Steffan, the Veterans’ First coordinator at Las Positas who helped develop the program. “In this case, it is more engineering technicians. Ultimately, we hope this program leads to good-paying careers for many of our returning veterans.”

McCormick said the average age for veterans to attend college after active duty is 24. If they decide to go into a STEM field, they often need to start with the most basic math classes, which already puts them behind other students.

That’s why Growth Sector developed an accelerated math curriculum coupled with tutoring. The Engineering Technology Program is designed in a cohort-style format, so vets have each other for support.

Jeremy Taylor, an Army staff sergeant who served in Afghanistan, is enrolled in the program and spending this summer learning how to manufacture cooling arms and other custom-engineered parts for the National Ignition Facility (NIF).

“I really appreciate the opportunities the program has opened up for me,” he said. “It has allowed me to acquire a new set of skills and see a career path I would have never considered before.”

Steven Leahy, a Marine Corps corporal who served in Iraq, is doing computer modeling at the National Security Engineering Division’s Pulsed Power Lab.

“I’m extremely grateful to be here,” he said. “I moved from Montana exclusively to attend Las Positas after hearing they have an outstanding veterans’ support program, but I never could have imagined getting an opportunity like this.”

More than 35 students participating in Growth Sector programs across California have been selected to participate in hands-on internships at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA Ames Research Center, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and other private companies.